Pharmaceutical containers for home use are well known in the art, including those that can store a plurality of medications in segments of the container for different days of the week, different weeks, and so forth. These types of containers assist a user or patient in staying organized with respect to which medications to take on which days. Furthermore, for those users being prescribed (or advised) to take a large number of different medications, these types of segmented containers attempt to ensure that the appropriate medications are taken on the appropriate days, and provides a user with an overview of when the prescription will run out, and another trip to the pharmacy may be in order.
In any event, these containers rely heavily on the user filling each segment properly, or in some cases another person filling the containers for the user.
Other users, who want to be able to reference the individual container of each of the medications simply line up each of the pharmaceutical containers for individual medications and take them on a regular schedule.
In either of these cases, a high degree of user involvement is required in either filling the segmented containers, or developing a personal system of remembering which medications to take at which times. In both cases, obtaining a refill on the prescription requires a user to actively monitor the number of pills remaining. With medications that are taken a number of times per day, this can be difficult. Furthermore, one or more of the above steps may be time consuming or difficult for patients with certain medical conditions. Patients who take a number may be prone to over or under medicating and there is a high risk of error that can lead to hospitalization or even death
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide an improved pharmaceutical management system.